Parmenides wrote a philosophical poem in which a goddess reveals the path of truth. For him, being is one, eternal and unmoving, and the change we see is an illusion of the senses. He was the first to argue rigorously about what reality is, and almost all later Greek philosophy tried to answer him.
Core ideas
What is, is, and what is not, is not: nothing can come from nothing
True reality is single, eternal and unchanging
The senses deceive, and only reason can reach the truth
The tradition: Eleatic
Eleatic comes from Elea, the city where this school was born, which denied change and multiplicity. Parmenides is its founder, and his student Zeno created paradoxes to defend him.
